JP Morgan has emerged with credibility across the board as clients consolidate their securities services at an increasing rate. The fact that the group won several awards this year shows the depth of its expertise.

It has been another strong year for the group, with assets under administration rising from $13,748 billion at the end of 2009 to $14,900 billion in 2010. It has won a number of major new mandates, including two top-tier UK investment managers and a £2 billion pension scheme.

These new clients have cited JP Morgan’s technological capabilities, depth of knowledge and attention to detail as key factors in their choice. Many have had complex needs and JP Morgan was one of few providers with the capability to address these problems. For example, one client had encumbered assets in their lending programme, which JP Morgan was able to take internally and re-book the trades. Another client was launching a major alternative Ucits fund dealing in property derivatives. It chose JP Morgan because of the range of services that the global derivatives and derivatives collateral management groups could provide for this type of instrument and because everything could be dealt with in one place.

The group has undertaken a number of initiatives this year, such as its global fund services group allowing for 24-hour support through the elimination of batch time-zone restrictions. Its compliance team has developed a proprietary, rules-based system to perform securities and exchange commission compliance as well as inland revenue service prospectus compliance. It has also upgraded its Sungard Investran platform, which extended the support model for clients in Asia. The group now offers custody, asset servicing, fund accounting and administration, securities lending, cash management as well as prime services across a range of international asset classes in a co-ordinated structure to support long and short funds.

The group has made a number of technical enhancements this year, such as increasing the available fund instrument data with its core custody platform. It has also improved US and non-US tax-processing enhancements; implemented a front-end order management application with controls for prospectus and local market rules; and enhanced system support for global third-party custody lending, wash account aggregation and AutoFX integration.

In this way, JP Morgan has managed to be a safe pair of hands and an innovator in the European securities services market.

A quant at Citi has revived debate about the changing nature of the profession (www.risk.net/2417747). The scope is narrower, he claims; the job has been dumbed down, and today's quants are little more than programmers. Is he right?